Several of Deutsche Bank’s biggest shareholders are calling for its chief executive to make deeper cuts to its perennially lossmaking US investment bank as they run out of patience with the lender’s poor performance and tumbling share price. One of the investors said they told the bank recently that they wanted it to shrink the US investment bank by this summer.

Deutsche Bank is planning to cut 1,950 jobs as part of the integration of its Postbank business, newspaper Handelsblatt reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The bank will cut about 750 jobs by 2020 in the joint headquarters of Deutsche Bank's private and corporate clients business, while another 1,200 will go by 2022 in the area of operations, which includes account services and credit settlement, the paper said. Deutsche Bank is in the process of integrating Postbank, the retail banking business once owned by the German postal service, with its own retail banking operations to save costs.

“We have pivoted from a pure cost-control focus in 2018 to a controlled, disciplined growth phase in 2019,” Jamal Al Kishi, chief executive officer of the Middle East and Africa for the Frankfurt-based lender, said in an interview. Deutsche Bank recently hired Ibrahim Qasim from Doha-based QInvest LLC as head of structured solutions for the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Khalid Rashid from Standard Chartered Plc to take charge of capital markets. Deutsche Bank reported a drop in global revenue for the eighth successive quarter earlier this month, led by a slump in its key fixed-income trading business.

This Deutsche bank bond no longer exists, but at the height of the financial crisis it sparked a controversy across European markets. What happened then is worth comparing with the furore this week over Santander’s failure to call – or repay – one of its bonds. The Deutsche bond was issued in 2004, and classified as “lower tier 2 capital”.

Germany’s biggest bank this week sold $1.25 billion of three-year dollar bonds that pay 255 basis points over benchmark interest rates, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named. Only Denmark’s Danske Bank A/S, which is grappling with a money laundering scandal, and Italy’s UniCredit SpA have paid similar or greater amounts. A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the dollar bond sale.

It matters less than it once did that the German government raises debt at risk-free rates. In the post-crisis regulatory landscape, senior bondholders could be bailed-in before Deutsche gets a state bailout. Last week, the German patient paid 230 basis points over the benchmark on a seven-year bond — the highest rate agreed by a big international bank this year on euro debt.

The Democratic chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday he was concerned that Special Counsel Robert Mueller may not be investigating President Donald Trump's ties to Deutsche Bank AG . U.S. Representative Adam Schiff announced last week a wide investigation into attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election as well as Trump's financial dealings, including "credible reports of money laundering and financial compromise" related to Trump business interests.

The bank raised eyebrows last week when it sold a total of €3.6bn in euro-denominated debt, paying 180 basis points over the benchmark for a two-year bond, a steep rate for short-term funding. It also paid 230bp over the benchmark on a seven-year bond, a higher rate than domestic Spanish lender CaixaBank, which recently raised five-year bonds at 225bp, according to capital markets news service IFR.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Friday he was in talks with banks about their future and called reports of a merger of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank "speculation". Media reports have said Germany would want a merger of its two main banks to go through before European Parliament elections in May. Scholz said he couldn't imagine what the elections have to do with the banking sector and was speculation that he could not understand.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Friday he was in talks with banks about their future and called reports of a merger of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank "speculation". Media reports have said Germany would want a merger of its two main banks to go through before European Parliament elections in May. Scholz said he couldn't imagine what the elections have to do with the banking sector and was speculation that he could not understand.

Two Democratic U.S. Senators - one of whom is a presidential candidate - renewed their calls on Thursday for a probe by the Senate banking committee into Deutsche Bank laundering allegations, according to a letter seen by Reuters. The letter, sent by Senators Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren to Mike Crapo, chairman of the banking committee, requested a "thorough, detailed bipartisan Committee investigation into Deutsche Bank's compliance history, to be followed by a report and hearing".

After cutting costs in the Latin American nation 40 percent last year, Deutsche Bank is moving its fixed-income and currencies trading businesses to Sao Paulo from New York City, Maite Leite, the Frankfurt-based company’s chief country officer for Brazil, said in an interview. Two investment bankers will relocate there from New York to cover clients, and a director will be hired as local head of multinationals for global transaction banking, Leite said. The moves don’t mean Deutsche Bank is increasing its headcount in Brazil.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said on Tuesday that Germany needed to play a role in international finance and banking but declined to comment specifically on Deutsche Bank. ...

Called before the European Parliament after Deutsche Bank was once again tied to a number scandals late last year, Stephan Wilken, head of its anti-financial crime unit, on Monday night insisted the firm was serious about cleaning up its act. Handling funds of another bank’s clients is “a core tool to allow international trade,” Wilken told lawmakers in Brussels.

Variable compensation is one of several areas the lender has earmarked for further possible savings if necessary to achieve its profitability target, von Moltke said on a conference call with fixed-income investors. Deutsche Bank has seen eight consecutive quarters of falling revenue amid an effort by Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing to boost profitability. Deutsche Bank is planning to slash bonuses for 2018 by at least 10 percent, though a final decision depends on the fourth quarter performance, people familiar with the matter have said.

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and the local units of Citigroup and Deutsche Bank cannot properly respond to criminal cartel charges because they are still waiting for the prosecutor to detail its full case, a barrister for Citi told a packed Sydney courtroom on Tuesday. Australian authorities filed criminal charges in June against the trio and six senior bankers over the sale of A$3 billion ($2.17 billion) in ANZ shares in 2015, and subsequent trading by the underwriters. Citi's barrister, Rob Ranken, said it required full details of the allegations before the bank could prepare a defense.

The request in early 2016 was escalated to several committees responsible for vetting credit applications and was ultimately rejected by the group reputational risk committee, which at the time included Christian Sewing, now Deutsche Bank’s chief executive officer. One concern was that it would be difficult to collect debt from Trump if he won the presidential election, the person said.

Standard & Poor's left its ratings on Deutsche Bank unchanged on Monday but said that raising its profitability is the biggest hurdle for Germany's largest lender. Deutsche Bank's ratings have been under pressure from major agencies such as S&P as the bank restructures under new Chief Executive Christian Sewing who took charge last April. The bank's earnings for the fourth quarter, announced on Friday, "confirm our view that management's biggest challenge is to improve profitability and bolster the bank's customer franchise", S&P said in a statement.

Congressional investigators expect the House Financial Services Committee to examine Deutsche Bank AG’s efforts after the 2016 election to shed a loan it made to VTB Group, a large Russian state-owned bank. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Deutsche Bank, seeking to slash its exposure to Russia in late 2016, scrambled to sell a $600 million loan it had outstanding to VTB, according to documents and people familiar with the funding. Deutsche Bank wasn’t able to sell the rest of the loan, and VTB paid it back in August 2017, the documents show and the people said.

Deutsche Bank is in advanced talks on receiving an additional investment from Qatar as the bank seeks to improve its finances, Bloomberg reported on Saturday. Bloomberg, citing unidentified people with knowledge of the matter, said the timing and size of the investment was unclear. The investment would likely come through Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund, the report said.

AG, seeking to slash its exposure to Russia in late 2016, scrambled to shed a $600 million loan it had outstanding to VTB Group, a large Russian state-owned bank, according to documents and people familiar with the funding. Deutsche wasn’t able to sell the rest of the loan, and VTB paid it back in August 2017, the documents show and the people said. Deutsche Bank’s effort to shed the VTB loan—which hasn’t been previously reported—came as the German bank worried about its financial contacts with Russia, which U.S. intelligence officials accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election while the campaign was still under way.

The U.S. labor market notched its 100th straight month of increased employment in January while sustaining wage growth. Some major oil firms shrugged off a plunge in crude prices in 2018’s final months to post some of their biggest annual profits in years.